Current Residents
Meet our residents.
List
Copy Link
Organizations on this page
First Year Residents (PGY-1)
Copy Link
- Kaustubh Kulkarni is a psychiatry resident in the Neuroscience Research Training Program (NRTP). He earned his bachelor's in Neuroscience, with minors in Computer Science and Philosophy, from Rutgers University. He then completed his MD and PhD in the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Broadly, Kaustubh is interested in how disruptions in brain architecture drive psychiatric disorders through changes in cognitive and affective processing. His research aims to utilize computational and statistical modeling, in combination with brain imaging, to infer aberrent mental processes underlying psychiatric dysfunction, with a focus on identifying diagnostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets for addictive disorders. Kaustubh is interested in interventional treatment modalities, including transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), low-intensity focused ultrasound (LIFU), and ketamine-based therapies to treat refractory psychiatric illness. Additionally, he is committed to evidence-based psychotherapy, with a particular interest in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). At Yale, he aims to continue bridging basic neuroscience and clinical psychiatry to inform novel, personalized interventions for complex mental illness.
- Brandon Manor, MD, graduated from Morehouse College with a B.A. in Psychology. After college, he worked with Fund II Foundation’s internXL initiative, where he helped design its Ambassador Program and contributed to their Black maternal and mental health initiatives. He later spent two years as a post-baccalaureate research trainee at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse & Alcoholism (NIAAA), researching diagnostic tools to personalize treatment of alcohol use disorder. In 2021, Brandon matriculated at Howard University College of Medicine, where he served in multiple leadership roles, including Vice President of his class and Co-President of the Psychiatry Student Interest Group. His passion for psychiatry extends nationally, as he co-chaired the Residents, Fellows, and Medical Students Committee for the 2023 American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting. Brandon holds a deep passion for community service. As an undergraduate, he co-founded a nonprofit in Atlanta focused on mentorship for college students, which also leads an annual service project supporting the local unsheltered population. Clinically, his interests lie in child and adolescent psychiatry, addiction psychiatry, and the intersection of policy and medicine—particularly in addressing systemic inequities and infrastructural barriers that limit access to care for marginalized populations. His leadership and service have earned him multiple honors, most recently his induction into the Gold Humanism Honor Society. Outside of medicine, Brandon enjoys exploring new restaurants, collecting vinyl records, visiting amusement parks, and traveling to recharge.
- Ardavan Mohammad Aghaei, MD, MPH, is a postdoctoral research associate at Bassir Nia's Lab and Schizophrenia Neuropsychopharmacology Research Group at Yale (SNRGY). He graduated from the MD, MPH program at Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Iran, where his research was focused on addiction epidemiology and social psychiatry. At Yale Psychiatry Department, he works under the supervision of Dr. Anahita Bassir Nia, conducting translational research on addiction and other psychiatric disorders. Ardavan's main interest lies in understanding the mechanisms of action of psychedelic drugs and exploring their potential in treating substance use disorders. Additionally, his other research track includes studying the role of the endocannabinoid system in the interplay of substance use disorders and stress/trauma responses and potentially targeting this system for the treatment of substance use or stress/trauma-related disorders. In his free time, Ardavan enjoys cooking and reading.
- Edna Normand, MD, PhD is a resident physician at the Yale Department of Psychiatry and Neuroscience Research Training Program (NRTP). She works to bridge the gap between medicine, science, and society. Dr. Normand completed her PhD at Princeton University and her MD at Rutgers RWJ, as part of the joint MD/PhD program at RWJ-Princeton. Using tools such as machine learning, whole-brain connectomics, and optogenetics, she mapped sexually dimorphic brain circuits in flies and studied how audiovisual signals are transformed into real-time motor responses during natural social interactions. Her dissertation sits at the intersection of circuits and systems neuroscience, computational neuroscience, and neuroethology, with a focus on multisensory signal processing. Her work was funded by an NIH F30 grant and presented at national and international conferences. She has been recognized by awards such as Merck’s Top 10 Global Innovator and the NIH BRAIN Initiative highlight award. Prior to her MD/PhD training, she earned dual bachelor’s degrees in neurobiology and media studies on a full merit scholarship at the Macaulay Honors College (CUNY-Hunter). In addition to her medical training and scientific background, Dr. Normand has worked for over 15 years across a spectrum of award-winning service and leadership roles, including during public emergencies such as Hurricane Sandy. Born in New York City, she is a first generation college graduate. Through formative encounters with her underserved immigrant community's experiences with mental illness and language/cultural barriers, she developed early interests in public psychiatry and science that could improve the lives of chronically ill patients. Throughout her MD/PhD training, she worked at a free clinic for uninsured patients for nine years. At Yale, she is interested in building an interdisciplinary research program involving psychotic disorders, brain-body intersections, and neuromodulation (TMS, VNS, and ultrasound), drawing on her expertise in neural circuits and signal processing. She is also interested in providing integrated care for patients with complex neuropsychiatric and medical needs (including functional disorders). Dr. Normand is committed to serving the New Haven community and aims to provide outstanding and compassionate care to her patients, including those who have limited access to care, while advancing science toward future treatments.
- Aanchal Shah, MD, graduated from the University of Florida with a B.S. in Psychology and a certification in Dance in Medicine. As a lifelong dancer, Dr. Shah is deeply inspired by the intersection of the arts, medicine, and mental health. During her undergraduate studies, Dr. Shah was able to combine her love for dance and passion for medicine by developing Down to Dance - a free, evidence-based dance program designed to support individuals with Down Syndrome by enhancing motor skills, cognitive function, and emotional well-being. Down to Dance has since expanded to over 50 locations nationwide. Dr. Shah later attended the Florida State University College of Medicine where she curated a novel Arts in Medicine Volunteer program that offers an array of research driven programs supporting the mental health of patients across Florida. Dr. Shah’s clinical interests include Child and Adolescent psychiatry as well as Women's Mental Health. She currently serves on the AACAP Art and Innovation Committee as well as the Reproductive Psychiatry Trainees Executive Board. Dr. Shah wrote and published a children's book titled “Dr. Didi’s Guide to Anxiety - An Art Based Approach”. Her book aims to help families learn evidence based coping mechanisms that utilize a child’s natural creativity and curiosity.
- I was born into a family with a deeply spiritual, nature-oriented, and artistic way of being in the world. I grew up practicing Bharatanatyam, a form of classical dance rooted in sharing stories from ancient Indian scripture. Trained in attending to and performing the many ways we express ourselves–through words, movement, gaze, and silence–I felt at home working with people living with autism, where communication can be both incredibly challenging and incredibly rich. After attending college at Duke University, I moved to Chicago, where I worked in a therapeutic kindergarten classroom as an Applied Behavior Analysis therapist. I also led grassroots initiatives to address mental health disparities in the South Asian diaspora, including organizing a speaker series to increase mental health literacy and creating a national provider database to help community members find culturally humble, multilingual mental health professionals. My goldendoodle Lucky and I then made our way to the Upper West Side, where I completed a Master’s in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University. My scholarly and creative work explores the intersection of psychiatry, phenomenology, narrative, and embodiment. While in medical school at UNC-Chapel Hill, some of my most meaningful experiences included facilitating phenomenologically-informed narrative medicine workshops at a residential eating disorder treatment center, for patients to reconnect with their identities as artist, sister, and queer, to name a few–rather than feel defined by their illness–as a way to support agency and recovery. Another was teaching two semesters of a narrative medicine course at Columbia called Close Reading and Creative Writing, focused on examining literary elements of a text and their role in distilling meaning from stories. Alongside my academic work, I model for figure drawing classes, perform improv (laughter is my love language), and love being outside and walking barefoot.
- Kristina Wilbekin Walker, MD, PhD, is excited to be joining the Yale Neuroscience Research Training Program. She received her bachelors degree in Psychology from Spelman College, and went on to complete the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Kristina worked with Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo on her thesis in Epidemiology, that focused on considerations for implementation of multipurpose prevention technologies (MPT’s), novel modalities that combine contraceptives and STI/HIV prevention using a mixed methods approach. This work was supported by an F-31 Diversity Award through the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. She is interested in utilizing the skill sets developed to better understand the mental health needs of individuals with dual diagnosis. She is also passionate about health equity and women’s mental health.
Second Year Residents (PGY-2)
Copy Link
- Samuel Dienel (Sam), MD, PhD, is a psychiatry resident in Yale’s Neuroscience Research Training Program. He completed his bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh, with minors in Chemistry and Applied Statistics. After completing his undergraduate training, he began working as a Research Assistant in the lab of Dr. David Lewis, working with the Brain Tissue Donation Program. He then matriculated to Pitt’s Medical Scientist Training Program, where he continued his work in Dr. Lewis’ lab. His thesis focused on the postmortem alterations to a group of cortical inhibitory neurons called somatostatin neurons in people with schizophrenia, using novel approaches to label target transcripts in sections of the postmortem human prefrontal cortex. Going forward at Yale, he hopes to apply his training in molecular neuroscience to address questions about the developmental patterning of prefrontal cortical circuits and how alterations in those developmental trajectories can give rise to psychiatric disorders with impaired cognitive function, such as schizophrenia and autism.
- I completed my medical training at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece at the height of the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean. Fascinated by transcultural psychiatry, I spent two years as a resident and rural doctor serving on the Greek island of Leros and the island's refugee reception center. The clinical practice sparked my interest in how healthcare information can be employed to refine psychiatric phenotypes, so I pursued a Master’s in Health Data Analysis at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where I delved into psychiatric genetics. During my post-doctoral fellowship at Yale, I used electronic health records, wearable device data, and multi-omic information to understand the underlying causes of anxiety disorders in diverse populations and to explore the shared and distinct genetic factors across various psychiatric conditions. As a resident in the Yale Neuroscience Research Track, I will focus on using multidimensional patient-related information to improve clinical prediction, emphasizing enhancing representation in healthcare data.
- Dr. Shanté (SHAHN-tay ) Jackson-Barnes comes to medicine as a first-generation college graduate and medical student from a military family background. She has a commitment to increasing diversity within the medical community and advocating for improving access to psychiatric services in the black and POC community. In 2015, Dr. Jackson-Barnes graduated from Florida State University with a B.S. in psychology with a minor in chemistry and a B.S. in criminology with a minor in biology. After graduation, she spent three years working at Coastal State Prison in Savannah, GA as a correctional officer before being promoted to correctional sergeant. Dr. J-B used this pathway to save up for the cost of medical school applications while also gaining a deep understanding of the ways in which minority peoples are impacted by America's carceral system. In 2019, she matriculated to VCU School of Medicine where she continued to champion her diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives by serving as an ambassador for the Student Council for Inclusive Excellence (SCIE), as well as the president of VCU’s Chapter of the Student National Medical Association (SNMA). A crowning achievement of her time at VCU was the collaboration with SNMA to create Noir Network, a mentoring database aimed at connecting the members with physicians of color for mentorship, shadowing, research, as well as her induction into the Gold Humanism Honor Society. Dr. J-B intends to pursue specialization in child and adolescent psychiatry. Her aim is to work primarily with adolescent-aged populations to be an advocate focused on addressing black mental health disparities, highlighting the importance of early intervention, and providing trauma-informed psychiatric care for adolescents within systems - such as the juvenile justice and foster care systems. Dr. J-B has a strong interest in first break psychosis and trauma-related disorders. She believes in a slow approach to medication management with a focus on psychological and social interventions as first defense. Outside of medicine, Dr. J-B is often found snuggled next to her Union Electrician husband and/or kitty, catching up on her anime watch list, reading the latest fantasy book, or enjoying some good eats.
- Hi! I am Noa. I was born and raised in Haifa, Israel, a beautiful harbor city by the Mediterranean Sea. My passion for medicine started when I was visiting my mother at the surgical floor, where she had been working as an anesthesiologist. I was especially curious about how the brain works, and what makes us think and behave the way we do. I completed my undergraduate studies in Biomedical Engineering at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, and earned my medical degree from Sackler School of Medicine at Tel-Aviv University. I fell in love with Psychiatry during my psych rotations in medical school and went on to complete an adult psychiatry residency program at the Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, which gave me an amazing opportunity to treat patients from all walks of Israeli society and grow as a psychiatrist. I was especially drawn to women’s mental health, and worked for a year at the Women’s Mental Health Service at the Division on Psychiatry in Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical center, where I was honored to give mental care for women who experienced mental distress in association with women's unique needs and life transitions (such as fertility and pregnancy related issues, traumatic labor, negative obstetric outcome such as still birth and disorders associated with the puerperium). Alongside my passion for clinical psychiatry, I seek answers for the many unanswered questions in the field through psychiatry research and focus on the genetic intersection with clinical manifestations of severe psychiatric mental disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Upon completion of residency, I was awarded a spot as a Basic Science Training Program (BSTP) Post-Doctoral Fellow and joined the Yale Mood Disorders Research Program (MDRP), directed by Dr. Hilary Blumberg, whom I was lucky to have as mentor. My research has been focusing on elucidation of the neurobiological and genetic mechanisms underlying the risk for suicidal behaviour in bipolar disorder, and the identification of brain and behavioural targets to reduce suicide-risk. Outside of psychiatry, I am a proud mother of three, and enjoys exercising and playing the piano.
- Yasna Rostam Abadi, MD, MPH, is a Yale Psychiatry resident in the Neuroscience Research Training Program. She received her MD-MPH from Tehran University of Medical Sciences, where she was recognized with the Avicenna Awards for Excellence in Education, Health Care Quality Improvement, and Social Activism. During medical school, she served as Chair and Head of the Central Council of the Students’ Scientific Research Center. She also conducted research at the Iranian National Center for Addiction Studies, a WHO Collaborating Center, focusing on the epidemiology of substance use and its health consequences in Iran and the Eastern Mediterranean region. Following graduation, Dr. Rostam Abadi completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Department of Population Health at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, working on three NIH-funded multi-center clinical trials aimed at improving addiction treatment in primary care and hospital settings. Her work has been published in The Lancet Psychiatry, The Lancet Global Health, JAMA Internal Medicine, and Addiction. At Yale, her current research interests focus on using electronic health records, unstructured notes, and spoken narrative responses to identify clinical and behavioral patterns underlying mental illness.
- I am interested in neural control of innate behavioral drives, with a focus on acute hunger, satiety, and energy homeostasis. Clinically, this pertains most directly to eating disorders, and more broadly to aberrant reward perception and ultimately entrenchment of counter-survival behaviors. My interest stemmed from a background as a track athlete and later an amateur physique athlete. Come and lift heavy with me in the gym! I came to the U.S. from China at the age of 18 to pursue my undergraduate education. I got my first biomedical research experience at Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute, where I studied retina development and degeneration in Dr. Valeria Canto-Soler’s lab. After college, I spent two years in Durban, South Africa and conducted research on bacterial molecular genetics and DNA topology. I lived in a hostel and shared happiness and sorrow with vibrant local university students, hardworking Zulu women who came into the city for better job opportunities, and an adorable landlord gentleman of Dutch descent. I then returned to the U.S. for the MD PhD training. I completed my PhD in Dr. Scott Sternson’s lab at HHMI Janelia Research Campus. We were interested in coding of need states and need-fulfilling processes by subregions of the hypothalamus. My colleague Dr. Shengjin Xu and I developed a new research platform that allowed all the sufficiently refined cell types and all behaviors of interest to be studied in the same animal. We were thereby able to make discoveries unattainable by previously existing methods. At Yale, I have joined Dr. Ruslan Medzhitov’s lab. My project focuses on the gut-brain sensing of essential nutrients that we humans do not seem to report specific “craving” for. The imbalance and rebalance of these nutrients track the trajectory of anorexia illness and recovery. I am passionate about connecting this work to clinical care and making eating disorder care at all acuity levels more accessible to patients of all ages and background.
Third Year Residents (PGY-3)
Copy Link
- As an undergraduate at Columbia University, I majored in Biomedical Engineering. My formative experience working in the Biomaterials and Interface Tissue Engineering Lab paired with my passion to help patients motivated me to become a physician-scientist. I joined the MD/PhD program at Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and completed my thesis work in Dr. Kam Leong’s lab onhow dual-purpose nanomaterials that can deliver chemotherapy and bind to inflammatory damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) thereby mitigating the metastatic spread of breast cancer. My research was funded by an NIH F31 Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award in April 2021. As my desire to become a psychiatrist grew, I developed a novel research plan to test the influence of DAMP-scavenging nanoparticles on chemobrain side effects, particularly anxiety. My thesis work was awarded the Miriam Berkman Spotnitz Award in Oncology at Columbia’s medical school graduation in 2023. Going forward, I would like to conduct clinical research aimed at better understanding or improving treatments of women’s mental health and it’s incredible to have the opportunity to pursue this research at Yale.
- Amy was born and raised on Long Island, New York and graduated from Stony Brook University where she completed an honors thesis on taste processing in the gustatory cortex. She finished her MD/PhD at UMass Chan Medical School where her thesis work on understanding the role of the synaptic protein neurexin in serotonin signaling was supported by an F30 fellowship through the National Institute of Mental Health. Amy co-founded UMass Mind’s Community Intervention Program to work alongside community members with serious mental illness, local mental health organizations, and academic institutions. She co-developed the Food4Thought nutrition program and promoted creative expression for those living with serious mental illness and/or substance use disorders through arts-based programs. As a third-year psychiatry resident at Yale, Amy continues her passion for public psychiatry, community-academic partnerships, medical education, and stigma reduction. She is part of the Public Psychiatry Distinction Track and a member of the Serotonin House in the residency program. She currently co-leads the Public Psychiatry, Mental Health Policy, and Lifestyle Psychiatry Resident Interest Groups in an effort to advocate for a healthier New Haven. She is one of the resident representatives on the Medical Student Education Committee and previously served as the Director of Communications in the Psychiatry Residents' Association. In the Yale Resident Fellow Senate, she has taken on the role of VP of Wellbeing to collaboratively improve the landscape of wellness for residents and fellows across the institution. Outside of work, Amy enjoys all things food, staying active, and spending time with friends and family.
- Lala Forrest, MD is a Tribal citizen of the Pit River Nation and a descendant of the Modoc and Wintu people, born on her ancestral lands and growing up in a suburban setting, she considers herself a rural-urban straddler. She was the first in her family to graduate from a university, obtaining a Bachelor of Science in Physiology and Neuroscience from the University of California, San Diego, and obtained her medical degree at the Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine with a concentration in medication education and received the Excellent Performance Award in Psychiatry and was inducted into the Gold Humanism Honor Society. Dr. Forrest is currently completing her residency in psychiatry, with a deep interest in decolonizing psychiatry and psychotherapy. Her clinical approach highlights informed consent, relationship-building, and the dismantling of colonial frameworks that shape mental health systems. She is committed to advancing holistic approaches to well-being by bridging standard-of-care, evidence-informed practice, lived experience, and cultural/community-based healing. She serves as an At-Large Director for the Association of American Indian Physicians and Co-Chairs its Policy and Legislative Committee. She also collaborates on the Indigenous School of Medicine, an initiative to reimagine medical education through Indigenous leadership and traditional knowledge systems. As a mentor with We Are Healers, she supports the next generation of Indigenous leaders across education, advocacy, and planetary health. Looking ahead, Dr. Forrest is interested in building an independent practice that integrates relational, culturally responsive, and community-centered psychiatric care—blending clinical integrity with Indigenous frameworks of healing. Outside of work, she enjoys CrossFit, running, swimming, learning her Tribe’s language, and lovingly spoiling her pit-boxer mix.
- Simone graduated from Harvard College in 2016, where she received an A.B. in integrative biology. Her undergraduate thesis, which used diffusion tensor imaging to examine relationships between social functioning and white matter microstructural variation in typically developing children, was advised by Dr. Charles Nelson of Boston Children's Hospital and received the Thomas T. Hoopes prize. She now works on the Autism Biomarkers Consortium for Clinical Trials' Data Analytics and Acquisition Core analyzing EEG and eye-tracking data.
- Henry Kietzman, MD, PhD, is a resident in Yale’s Neuroscience Research Training Program. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Swarthmore College with a B.A. in Neuroscience. He then enrolled in the Medical Scientist Training Program at Emory University. During medical school, he organized a resilience initiative to promote social connection and decrease burnout among medical students. He then transitioned to his dissertation work in the lab of Dr. Shannon Gourley, where he performed circuit-level analyses to understand how connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala allow social experiences to shape behavior in rodents. At Yale, he aims to continue using rodent models to understand the neural building blocks of social cognition, while developing new pharmacological and psychological interventions for those with mental illness focused on improving social connectedness. This dovetails with a vested interest in understanding new patient-centered treatments to decrease mental illness burden in LGBTQ+ individuals.
- Songjun William (Will) Li, MD, PhD, is a psychiatry resident in Yale’s Neuroscience Research Training Program. He graduated from Emory University with a bachelors degree double majoring in music performance as well as neuroscience and behavioral biology. There, he studied the neurobiological basis of relational memory formation in the Rhesus macaque model under the guidance of Dr. Beth Buffalo. After college, he joined Dr. Leslie Ungerleider’s lab at the NIMH to investigate facial processing using as a post-bacc fellow. Will then moved to Boston, where he continued his studies at the Boston University School of Medicine, and completed his PhD dissertation with Dr. Ziv Williams at Mass General Hospital evaluating single-neuronal responses during complex social decision making in mice. His research has, thus far, revealed a putative executive mechanism in the prefrontal cortical network that allows animals to evaluate social information about others that can adaptively influence pro-social decisions, competitive effort, and sociability. Will's current research interests aim to build upon our understanding of how the brain processes and encodes socially motivated behaviors, uncovering the mechanisms that go awry in psychosocial disorders using rodent models, and exploring novel treatment options – such as neuromodulation and psychedelics – to restore behavioral function. He is also interested in optimizing digital tools and wearable technologies to detect and track psychiatric disorders such as depression, anxiety, OCD, and PTSD.
- Jada McMahon is a current psychiatry intern at Yale. She was born in Coney Island, NY and attended undergraduate and medical school in upstate New York. She currently serves on the Psychiatry Residents' Association as the PGY-1 representative on the Graduate Medical Education Committee (GMEC) and the co-PGY-1 representative on the Graduate Educational Committee (GEC). Jada is passionate about criminal-legal system reform, reproductive justice, and other forms of legislative advocacy particularly as it pertains to BIPOC youth.
- Alyssa Nielsen, MD is a psychiatry resident at Yale. She attended Tulane University where she studied neuroscience and dance prior to transferring to the University of Florida as part of a combined BS-MD program. In medical school, she directed a primary care clinic specializing in gender affirming therapy and established a psychiatry clinic, all free of cost to patients through the student-run Equal Access Clinic Network. At Yale, Alyssa has served as Co-President of the Psychiatry Residents' Association, a member of the Medical Student Education Committee, and co-leader of the Public Psychiatry Resident Interest Group. She is part of the Public Psychiatry and Clinician Educator Distinction Tracks. Additionally, she looks forward to the opportunities afforded as a 2025-2027 APA Public Psychiatry Fellow. She is passionate about public psychiatry, medical education, and investigating patients' and caregivers' perspectives of mental health care.
- Yasmin Rawlins, MD, grew up in New Jersey and attended high school in New York City. She graduated cum laude from Harvard University in 2015 with a major in African and African-American studies, and a minor in Human Evolutionary Biology. Her undergraduate thesis was written on her qualitative study of patient experience on The Family Van, a mobile health clinic providing free health services to underserved communities throughout Boston. She was awarded the Sangu Delle Prize for Best Social Engagement Thesis, the Alain Locke Prize for Most Outstanding Academic Scholar in African-American Studies, and the Joseph Garrison Parker Prize. Yasmin received her M.D. from Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons in 2019. During medical school, she served as the executive board community service representative for the Black and Latino Students Organization, a co-leader of the American Medical Women’s Association chapter, and a volunteer senior student clinician in the behavioral health clinic at the Columbia Student Medical Outreach Program. She also conducted research on ethnic differences among participants at OnTrackNY, an early intervention program for first episode psychosis. Upon graduation, she was elected as a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society and Gold Humanism Honor Society, and awarded the Barbara Liskin Memorial Award in Psychiatry. Yasmin completed her internship year in psychiatry at the University of Southern California and served as a delegate to the Committee of Interns and Residents. Most recently, Yasmin worked as a clinical assessor for the TRIUMPH study, a randomized controlled trial examining an evidence-based intervention for engagement with mental health services within African-American churches. Her clinical interests include racial and ethnic health/healthcare disparities, public psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry, and psychotherapy. She is honored to continue her training as a psychiatry resident at Yale University.
- Abiba Salahou is a resident physician in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine. She is currently a 2024-2025 APA SAMHSA Minority Fellow and a member of the national Gold Humanism Honor Society. Her clinical interests include childhood trauma, racial socialization, race-based trauma (RBT), acculturation stress, and immigrant mental health. She has a strong interest in narrative medicine and served as a 2022-2023 Doximity Op-Med Writing Fellow. She is also interested in medical education and serves as a mentor to premedical and medical students. She is passionate about community organizing, antiracism, restorative social justice work, and de-stigmatizing mental illness. She has presented her work at national conferences including the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP). She plans to serve diverse communities as a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist. Abiba is currently enrolled in the Yale Young Physicians' Leadership Curriculum, is a mentor in the Yale Post Graduate Association MAP program, and is actively involved in the Yale Psychiatry Residents' Association (PRA) through leadership roles on the Social and Orientation Committees.
Fourth Year Residents (PGY-4)
Copy Link
- As an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I majored in Chemistry and minored in Biology and Political Science. At MIT, I worked in Ed Boyden’s lab and used optogenetics approaches to silence epileptic seizures. I then joined the MD/PhD program at NYU, completing my thesis in Gord Fishell’s lab using single-cell genomics and lineage tracing approaches to study cortical interneuron development. Going forward, I hope to apply basic neuroscience research tools to better understand and treat neuropsychiatric illnesses. I am particularly interested in disorders with a developmental origin, including autism and schizophrenia. I am very excited to join the NRTP at Yale for residency, where I plan to continue my research on fetal brain development.
- Daniel (Dan) F. Camacho, MD, PhD, is a Yale Psychiatry resident in the Neuroscience Research Training Program. He attended the University of Michigan, where he received a BS in Chemistry, with distinction, and an MS in Biomedical Engineering. He earned his MD and PhD degrees from the University of Chicago’s Medical Scientist Training Program with a specialization in immunology. Dan’s professional interests include patient care, research, science communication, and science outreach. His previous research has advanced our understanding of how allergic responses are triggered and how communication between cells of the body can allow cancer cells to grow unchecked. His current research aims to help us understand how interactions between immune cells and the nervous system contribute to mental health and psychiatric illness.
- Dr. Katharine Cioe completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Connecticut. She received her medical degree at the Frank H. Netter School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University, where she was elected to the Gold Humanism Honor Society. Dr. Cioe completed the first three years of her residency at Northwell Zucker Hillside Hospital on the research track. She is currently the chief resident of the Interventional Psychiatry Service at Yale. She is also the president of the Interventional Psychiatry residency interest group.
- Joe Luchsinger, MD, PhD, is a resident in Yale’s Neuroscience Research Training Program. He completed a BS in neuroscience and psychology and BA in physics at Baldwin Wallace University. During that time, he worked in the Mickley lab studying PTSD and unofficially broke the world record for the world’s longest handshake. Joe then moved to Vanderbilt University for his MD-PhD. While there, he was the president of his medical school class and the medical school wine club. Towards the end of medical school, his peers elected him into the honor society Alpha Omega Alpha. He also spent much time on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, and locally advocating for increased federal investment in biomedical research. He completed his PhD in the Winder, where he had an NIH fellowship to use preclinical models to study the neurobiology of stress and its relationship to addiction. He aims to continue to use preclinical models to better our understanding of psychiatric illness and improve its treatment.
- Sara Katherine Mourani (also known as Cara Mourani) is a Lebanese-Syrian medical graduate of the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC). She currently serves as Chief Resident of the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit (CNRU). Her clinical and research interests include disaster psychiatry, mental health policy reform, schizophrenia (prodromal states and first-episode psychosis), and computational neuroscience. These interests were shaped by her direct, on-the-ground experience during Lebanon’s overlapping crises since 2019, including the October Revolution, the economic collapse, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the August 4th Beirut Port explosion. During this time, she collaborated with the Arab Reform Initiative, a Paris-based think tank, and published a scoping review of Lebanon’s mental health system, proposing policy reforms with an emphasis on disaster preparedness and system resilience. She also worked on multiple disaster psychiatry initiatives, including the development and delivery of a trauma-awareness curriculum at her medical center, as well as the co-founding of Fashit Khele’ (translation: Catharsis) a free, online group support program with a clinical psychologist to tackle the shortage of mental health professionals in the country. She aspires to continue working on disaster-related mental health initiatives in her native Lebanon and the wider region, integrating clinical care, research, and policy reform.
- Julio C. Nunes, MD is a research-track Psychiatry Resident at Yale University and Chief Resident of Outpatient and Addiction Services at the West Haven VA. His work focuses on addiction, chronic pain, and health disparities, with an emphasis on translating research into patient-centered policy, advocacy, and practice. He is a Laughlin Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists and a Leadership Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. As a member of Yale’s Pain and Addiction Interaction Neurosciences (PAIN) Laboratory and a former research fellow at the Stanford Center for Clinical Research, Dr. Nunes has authored more than 40 peer-reviewed publications, chapters, and commentaries. His scholarship has been recognized by the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry, the College on Problems of Drug Dependence, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the American Society of Hispanic Psychiatry. Nunes also serves on the board of Doctors for Drug Policy Reform and recently partnered with U.S. Senator Edward Markey’s office on the dissemination of the Modernizing Opioid Treatment Access Act, legislation aimed at expanding access to methadone through community pharmacies. Education is another core commitment. Dr. Nunes is a recurrent lecturer at the Yale School of Medicine, has led national workshops on addiction and chronic pain, and received Yale Psychiatry’s Resident Teaching Award as a PGY-1. Originally from Brazil and Mexico, he brings a global perspective to questions of access and equity in mental health and addiction treatment. Across his clinical work, research, teaching, and advocacy, his goal is to make addiction care more equitable, compassionate, and accessible.
Child and Adult Integrated Residents
Copy Link
- Emily Behling, MD is a clinical fellow and Chief Resident in the Albert J. Solnit Integrated Child, Adolescent and Adult Psychiatry Program. Dr. Behling received her B.S. in Biology from the University of Connecticut and her M.D. from the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. Her research interests involve using advanced meta-analytic techniques and clinical trials to improve the understanding and pharmacological treatments of mental health conditions affecting children and adults including Tourette syndrome, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and anxiety disorders.
- Dr. Laelia Benoit is a Clinical Fellow (PGY-3) in the Solnit Integrated Training Program in Child, Adolescent, and Adult Psychiatry at the Yale Child Study Center. She is a French and Brazilian Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist (fully trained in France) and came to the U.S. in 2021 to work as a Fulbright Visiting Research Scholar at the Yale Child Study Center. Dr. Benoit maintains her affiliation with the French NIH (Inserm, CESP, Centre de Recherche en Epidémiologie et Santé des Populations). Dr. Benoit is the co-director of QUALab, Qualitative and Mixed Methods Lab, a collaboration between the Yale Child Study Center (Dr. Andrés Martin), and the CESP (Dr. Bruno Falissard). Dr. Benoit's previous research focused on early intervention in psychosis, anxious school refusal, and access to care for minorities. Her current project assesses the impact of climate change on the mental health of children and adolescents in three countries (the US, Brazil, and France). Laelia Benoit favors citizen research approaches involving adolescents, their parents, professionals, and family support groups. Her teaching (Yale University, Universidade de São Paolo, University of Paris) focuses on qualitative methods for researchers and psychological and social science skills for caregivers and school professionals to help them support children's health and reduce inequities in health care. Professional honors: Yale International Physician-Scientist Resident and Fellow Research Award (2023), Fulbright (2021), Monahan Foundation (2021), Inserm Award (2016), Paris Public Hospital AP-HP Award (2016). Methods: Qualitative (Grounded theory), Social Science, Mixed-methods, Transcultural Keywords: Youth mental health, Climate Change, Access to care, School refusal, Migration, Early Intervention (Autism, Psychosis), Adoption. Books : "L'adolescent fragile, peut-on prédire en psychiatrie? (2016), "Phobie scolaire, retrouver le plaisir d'apprendre" (2020), "Infantisme" (2023). All publications. Researchgate
- Rebecca Brady, MD, PhD is a child psychiatry resident in the Albert J. Solnit Integrated Program. Born and raised in North Carolina, Rebecca graduated summa cum laude from Duke University with a B.S. in Neuroscience and Philosophy and was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. She then completed her MD and PhD training as part of Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine’s Medical Scientist Training Program. Under the mentorship of Dr. Christopher Smyser and Dr. Cynthia Rogers, she examined how prenatal exposure to neighborhood crime and parental callous-unemotional traits related to functional brain connectivity in newborns as well as conduct problems and moral development in toddlers. Her PhD in Neuroscience was funded by a T32 Imaging Sciences Fellowship and a F30 National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. She has published several first-author papers in top journals such as JAMA Psychiatry, Biological Psychiatry, and JAACAP. She was also named an Ann W. and Spencer T. Olin Fellow. Rebecca remains interested the relationships between prenatal risk factors, early brain development, and later psychiatric symptoms. At Yale, she plans to study the brain, behavioral, and environmental factors underlying moral development and externalizing disorders in mothers and infants. Clinically, Rebecca is interested in perinatal and early childhood psychiatry.
- Rachel completed her MD/PhD training at Yale School of Medicine and Yale School of Public Health in May 2024. Her dissertation focused on the implementation of evidence-based tuberculosis care in Uganda in Dr. Luke Davis' lab. Rachel also led research studies in Dr. Sarah Lowe's Trauma and Mental Health Lab to study the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and various forms of discrimination on healthcare workers. She aims to continue studying the implementation of evidence-based interventions using mixed methods throughout her time in the Integrated Child, Adolescent, and Adult Psychiatry Program at Yale.